Mark, I've been following mine across the Atlantic to where it presently sits in Memphis with a "Clearance Delay". The tracking status at the top says "A detailed commodity breakdown with itemized description and values is required". Under that there is a "recommended action":"Shipper or importer must provide a statement or revised invoice with detailed commodity breakdown."

Do you recall seeing this and if so, what did you do? I have not been contacted by anyone as of Sunday afternoon.

I saw import delay, but was called the next morning and they told me what they needed, which was not form 740. They emailed me a form, I can't see my email right now but I think it was a 509 and I filled it out and emailed it back and the next day the package was delivered. I later got a $36 invoice and elected to pay it.

Followup: Yesterday (Monday) I was contacted via email by a FedEx agent basically wanting to know "what's in the box?" I immediately replied explaining that I was a private individual, not commercial, and suspected that inside the box was a "kit" (as the packing list indicated) containing a "transceiver module" and a power cord. I attached the FCC form 740 with the Proper Harmonized Tariff Code included in the space provided. I received a reply about an hour later that it was cleared thru customs. No duty fee. It left Memphis at 3AM, and is presently sitting on my desk in work 7 hours later. Playtime tonight!

I find it interesting... troubling... annoying that there doesn't seem to be a common procedure for getting a parcel into the US. While the box was in Memphis, the agent contacting me was in suburban NYC, so it was not like the agent's was actually holding it. I was contacted by email, yet others are phoned. Some receive faxed forms to fill out, I received nothing. Some pay duty, others not. Can't help but wonder why it is like this?

Followup: ......I find it interesting... troubling... annoying that there doesn't seem to be a common procedure for getting a parcel into the US. While the box was in Memphis, the agent contacting me was in suburban NYC, so it was not like the agent's was actually holding it. I was contacted by email, yet others are phoned. Some receive faxed forms to fill out, I received nothing. Some pay duty, others not. Can't help but wonder why it is like this?

Wait until you want to sell to someone overseas. If it is over a modest amount of value you have to use an IRS exception to personally get an EIN so you can comply with a Bureau of the Census mandate to collect statistics. They you get to do ......

I'm told it can get ugly too if you repatriate gear for warranty repair in some instances.

And in the right instances there can be a lot of taxes/fees/costs.

Never send anything extra or undocumented - that can really gun up the works. A couple liters of unmanifested special oil kept a friend's car import in an bonded lock-up at the port at $60/day for three weeks - and he got the bill for the lab tests to prove it was just oil as well. Ended up a $1600 unneccessary cost for a $50 gift from the seller.

Lots of fun and seldom does it run exactly the same way each and every time.

One trick often not learned by SDR users (Flexers in particular) is when trying to receive a weak station, rather than turn up the AGC(T) to try an tease out the signal, one needs to turn the AGC(T) down and turn the AF gain up. This immediately improves S/N, so much so that I've had visitors practically fall over astounded. This technique is not restricted to PowerSDR and should work with any SDR with direct access to the AGC control.

Another trick is in ragchew mode, adjust the AGC(T/G) until your QSO partners audio just begins to dip. At that point, unless they are at the noise floor, the noise floor will have receded to a very low or even nil level. These adjustments are simply not possible with legacy radios.

Slightly off topic and a bit delayed but what you are describing sounds like the functional equivalent of "riding the RF Gain" with analog radios.

Apache Labs announced today that they are teaming up with OM Hermann, DL3HVH to help complete the Transmit functions of cuSDR as well expand the architecture for server functions for cross platform comparability.

> cuSDR is a state-of-the-art SDR platform and has key advantages such ascapability to simultaneously display multiple receivers with Panadapter andwaterfall displays (currently up to 7 receivers with Angelia) and has a hugepotential for future applications such as the client-server architecture, CUDAor OpenCL processing, SBC (SDR Server), QT allows cross platform compatibility.

> We currently do not have any timelines or a feature list, however, addition ofbasic transmit capability is one of the priorities,

Above is a partial quote from Abhi's post on the Apache Labs Yahoo Group where you can also read the rest of the announcement. For those not wanting to join another group you can see it on the front page of the Apache-labs website.

Having played with several SDR packages, I can tell you that cuSDR is not only gorgeous and will fair well graphically and for useability against the competition, but is also well thought out with an eye to towards the future!

Nice pre-announcement today on the topic of pre-distortion linearization improvements coming for the Hermes lineage of SDRs, including the Anan's, check it out if your interested!

Meanwhile, here is a little video I made on cuSDR. Audio is not the best because I was recording this with an external Mic. It shows the main GUI with HF Spectrum at top and then 4 receivers running. This is offered as something to compare against the new Flex GUI. In my humble opinion the GUIs look similar in some ways. I find that interesting. It looks like they all tie back to SDRmax if you start looking closely. Now cuSDR is an offshoot of SDRMax, so no mystery there.

The Flexradio's poor performance on LF/MF has been known for sometime and has been discussed here on eham before.

As I am a prospective Anan customer do you know of any HF Anan comparisons to other Radios, SDR or Knobbed? How does the Anan 100/D perform on CW? Is it adequate? Does the Anan have FSK (real hams use FSK Not AFSK on RTTY ) and FM modes - 2 modes I use. I do use AFSK on Digital modes other than RTTY.

I only rarely use SSB. CW and RTTY performance is very important to me. I also love the FM mode on 29.6 mhz.

All ask Nige about it and see if he can provide some info on CW, as you may already know I don't do CW right now, maybe some day.

I did do a listening CW compare to the KX3 and posted the video above. I will be doing more and better quality videos here soon. I just have some changes to do in the shack with my output audio and then I will be using screen video capture verses cell phone and web cam recording.

You are wise to ask and ensure your questions around CW get answered before taking a leap as for right now you would still be using PowerSDR, although a different and enhanced version.

Also, I believe someone is working on 50V PA's for greatly improved transmit performance, probably worth digging into as well.

There was also the pre-announcement above on the topic of pre-distortion linearization. It's cool stuff like this going on behind the scenes that makes this radio so fun and interesting.

I think what I am starting to see as all the pieces are coming together is a giant killer.

Personally have ZERO regrets for my decision on the Anan verses the Flex 6500/6700. I would not want to be one of those guys still waiting to get a $7K incomplete radio. Very sad situation for them, but then again they were warned over and over again to wait. And I do really wonder how they will be impacted by what has to be a massive budget overrun on those radios.

The Anan 100D simply has another AD converter. Why bother? Diversity reception and if one needed 14 receivers verses 7 then the 100D would likely be of interest.

I have not seen controls to route audio from 1 Reciever to one ear and the other to the other ear. You would have to ask that one in the yahoo group.

You can right now make the Anan stitch receivers together for larger swaths of bandwidth or spawn receivers individually on the same or multiple bands. Because your dealing with 380K receivers or smaller if you desire you can see entire bands or spawn receivers on the same band.

If you watch the CuSDR video you can see at the top that it shows the whole HF spectrum and what is very nice is when you have a given receiver with focus you can click anywhere on the spectrum and it will pop that receiver to where you clicked. You can see I clicked on the big signals and went there immediately.

Right now the limiting factor is the network width which is not set to a full gigabit wide. Once we have that (very soon) then one could tap into all 14 receivers.

The Xmit code for cuSDR will move along quickly now the Helmut got some help from Apache.

Sandro over at studio 1 is working on Xmit code for Studio 1 as well and there is an EXTio dll under development for the anan by a ver sharp developer out there I have done some testing for. I have had 5X receivers up on it and I could probably make that even more by spawning additional receivers on the same bands as any of the 5. Note to myself to try that, lol.

What lacks a little right now is full controls for each Reciever in most of the packages that work with it. I have played with one that the controls are fully functional for each RX. This is also possible in time for all the packages.

There are some Anan 10s online you could access with cuSDR to get a taste if you look.

What's cool is you are not tied to one developer, there are lots of developers doing lots of things.

I will go on record as saying that if Sandro gets the Xmit code working on Studio 1, that software for a 1 time $200 purchase will totally blow Flex's offering away as far as elegance goes, and I also think as far as usability goes.

Here is the bottom line in my mind. Flex right now has a semi sure path for the thin clients which will let you eventually ham on a clients that may or may not be written for the iPad and other tablets, devices ect.

We don't know if we will get that on the Anan and I don't see that as a focus right now. That said, I don't see hams doing what I call REAL haming on iPads. It's a novelty at best. Sure, they'll make QSO,s, ect on iPads, that's not my point. I am talking about sitting down at a fully functional station and doing what you want, how you want and when you want with all the controls at you finger tips. Maybe in some years haming will be seen different and more watered down, but that's not what I am really wanting. You have seen how I like to ham!

Again, don't listen to me, go do the homework, that way when you get your radio you are not suprised like the Flex 6K series buyers who will be waiting for even the basics. SDRs are still not for everyone, so that's my warning. Unless it was purely a reliability issue for you on the flex and the missing functionality, then you may want to be careful. The Ethernet connection is rock solid so no sputtering or crashes in QSOs an the Anan. Also keep in mind I built me a whale of a computer in HamZilla. Little Latency and a 450 double barrel hemi under the hood!

CW, you need to probably explore that one well. I am not the guy to comment. I simp,y suggest going on the Anan forum where many of the fathers of SDR hang out sometimes.

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